“Aimée” by Ian Levine

There are five basic elements in this world: Vayu, Ap, Prithvi, Akasha, and
the soft, long inferno that falls in front of your eyes
as they pierce, bore, and drill into my anima.

The salt I taste when I kiss your neck is sweeter than
the honeysuckle nectar that peppers my childhood memories.

Before we kiss, you lick your lips, and
its shimmer draws me in like sailors to a siren.
Everyone else has only spit. But for you,
It is Stevenson’s antidote, Homer’s nepenthe,
mother’s milk, the philosopher’s stone, and המן .

You are the one who inhabits,
inhibits, the lacuna within my soul; providing housekeeping, of sorts.
It is a selcouth feeling to trust another; and perhaps, frightening, as well.

But then I sense your rose-encrusted sillage like a truffle-sniffing pig,
snout sanguine from flaring open and closing tightly.

I take you
in as the men in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave took in their bright, shiny, new world.
You grab my neck tie like a leash and pull me away from my Amalek.

You kiss me on the metro platform; seduce me with the lispy eutony of your voice, then
push me on to the third rail—which vibrates with the words “wake up.”.

After the fall, I awake with my head on your lap, my querencia. And then I begin anew with you, lost in the coffee-ground, leather-bound vellichor of downtown Washington, D.C

∞

Ian Seth Levine is a writer who blogs for The American Red Cross to help persuade more blood donations and kill all vampires. Ian believes that writing is the most intimate and telling form of communication. His secrets are in Baltimore Magazine, Schmear Magazine, 9 Daughters Literary + Arts Journal, End of 83, Grub Street, The Towerlight, and The Free Library of the Internet Void. Ian has earned certification in skills ranging from defusing hostile behaviors to butchering artisanal meats. Ian holds a Master’s degree in Professional Writing from Towson
University.